Scorsese's autobiography as a 3rd generation Italian American.
"No American director has been more influenced by his background than Martin Scorsese" (Dougan). From his earliest films such as Italianamerican at New York University to the films like Raging Bull, GoodFellas, and Casino, he has devoted more than thirty years to exploring his culture on screen. "His films are an almost anthropological study of what it means to be Italian, Catholic, and repressed in post-war America." (Dougan). Through Martin Scorsese's films, the audience enters a world in which they may relate to by the intimacy of family and the injustices of class or through the romanized violence and power in which certain groups contained. .
Martin Scorsese's roots, as also for many Italian Americans, began in Sicily. The Scorsese family tree has its roots in the town of Polizzi Generosa, which is near Palermo. Francesco Scorsese was born around 1880. His mother died when he was six or seven, and when his father remarried Francesco was not welcome. A neighbor eventually took him in and put him to work on his farm until he was 19 at which point Francesco announced that he was going to America. When he came to America he found work as a laborer and eventually married his wife Teresa. She too had come from the same town in Sicily and had survived the difficult trip to America. Francesco and Teresa settled in Elizabeth Street, on the fringes of Little Italy in New York, and it was there at number 241 Elizabeth Street that their son Charles was born in 1912.
Across the street at number 232 lived the Cappa family who where also from Sicily from the town of Cimmina. Martin Cappa, like Francesco Scorsese, had been an orphan raised by another family but he had joined the army instead of working in the land. He was a cavalryman and one day, in his blue uniform, he went riding through Cimmina. He saw a young woman who was standing on her balcony and he was so close that she could reach down and touch the tip of his cap.